Cartoons about the great outdoors

One of my favorite cartoons, Bliss, has touched on the subject of hiking recently, so I thought I'd post some of my favorite cartoons that deal with the great outdoors! If you love hiking like I do, I hope you find the irony of some of them amusing!

Mt. Rainier National Park - Skyline Loop, 9-8-07

Our hiking group couldn't have asked for a more beautiful day - blue skies, nice breeze, air warm enough to savor the outgoing remnants of summer. We could see the full southern views from our many perches along this 4 mile or so trail - Tatoosh Range, Mt. Adams, Mt. Hood in Oregon, Mt. St. Helens, Nisqually River and Valley, and the very, very large Mt. Rainier. For more information, see the official website at http://www.nps.gov/mora

Skyline Loop starts at the Paradise Inn parking lot, but soon we left the construction and renovation sounds behind and walked along meadows, hearing Myrtle Falls (but not seeing it until later), and gaining new vantage point after vantage point. At one point we could look down the Nisqually Valley to see the bridge we crossed, but the enormous downed trees, stripped of bark by the elements of temperature, wind, and flood, and the similarly uprooted and tossed boulders didn't grab the attention at 5,600' that they did when we drove along the road on the way up. It's all in the perspective, my hiking mantra.

Mt. Rainier, 14, 410'

Close-up of section of Nisqually Glacier

Looking south along Nisqually ValleyMt. St. Helens
Mt. Adams

Rainier was front and center for most of this hike, and the western/southern sides that we were seeing had little snow on them. The Nisqually Glacier followed the contours of lava flows from long ago, and just east of there was a valley devoid of any green, so it was our professionally amateur scientific opinions that the area had, until quite recently, been covered by a glacier.

Just a few of the wildflowers were blooming or showing off their amazing seedpods - magenta and orange Indian paintbrush, windflower (a type of anemone) with its windblown beehive hairstyle strands of seeds, deep blue gentium, lavender asters. The trees were green, green, green, and the huckleberries once again were seriously depleted after our group grazed through.

Tasty little red berries that the happy botanist will have to give me the name for!

Geologic note from the happy academic geologist - the Cascade volcanoes were formed from very violent and explosive eruptions. This is because of the high levels of quartz, feldspar, and other minerals in the lava that would essentially clog the "veins" where magma collected, thus causing an incredible amount of pressure to build up until the eruption. Granitic magma. Rhyolite, pumice, and granite were all obvious by-products of long-ago eruptions. The last eruption of Rainier was around 150 years ago and by all prediction we are due for another major one. However, we felt no rumblings on this outing!

Critters - there were a few. We saw huge, ravens, a couple of marmots, many chipmunks, heard a hawk, and listened to the crackling sound of grasshoppers on the prowl.

Hoary marmot - this one gorged itself on someone's discarded trailmix, paying very little attention to these 2-legged creatures who were admiring its sumptous coat of black, grey, and red, and very sharp teeth.

This chipmunk had problems with boundaries. First he climbed on this hiker's arms, begged for food, and receiving none, scampered on up to his head. When it realized a handout was not in the making, it found its way to another hiker's backpack and unwittingly climbed into the side mesh pocket. This immediately caused a major chipmunk breakdown and it tried to paw its way out of the fabric cul de sac. It was eventually pulled out by the tail.

And here are more cool rocks and landscapes -

Mt. Rainier in background - I'm at about 6,800'

Approaching the part that resembled Mars

Rhyolite and pumice caught in ashfall, making a conglomerate of sorts

Happy academic geologist pointing out where a glacier probably smoothed one surface of this rock.

We felt like there should have been a glacier here; probably had been one here fairly recently because the soil in the area did not have much green in it. The going thought was that nitrogen had not had time to fix in that area, so, no plants to take in the nitrogen.

This hike was just a tiny fraction of the amazing sights around this mountain, so hopefully I'll have more opportunities to explore it more.